Utilizing a learning engine in predicting physical resource utilization

ABSTRACT

Methods and systems are disclosed for allocating physical resources based on predicted utilization demand utilizing a learning engine. Historical resource reservation data for a physical resource is accessed, wherein the physical resource is shared amongst physical resource users in a time displaced manner. Historical event data, comprising event types and event dates, is accessed. Correlations between historical reservation data and the historical event data are identified and are used by a learning engine to predict future high demand dates. A notification is generated regarding a predicted future high demand date, including a control via which a request may be initiated for the physical resource for the first predicted future high demand date. The notification may be transmitted to physical resource user(s), and in response to a detection of an activation of the request initiation control, a corresponding allocation for the physical resource is registered and the physical resource may be accordingly utilized.

INCORPORATION BY REFERENCE TO ANY PRIORITY APPLICATIONS

Any and all applications for which a foreign or domestic priority claimis identified in the Application Data Sheet as filed with the presentapplication are hereby incorporated by reference under 37 CFR 1.57.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains materialwhich is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has noobjection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent documentand/or the patent disclosure as it appears in the United States Patentand Trademark Office patent file and/or records, but otherwise reservesall copyrights whatsoever.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Field of the Invention

The present disclosure generally relates to performing searches.

Description of the Related Art

A given physical resource may be shared amongst users. Conventionalresource allocation systems disadvantageously fail to predict highdemand periods of resource utilization, and hence fail to adequatelyallocation such physical resource amongst the sharing users.

SUMMARY

The following presents a simplified summary of one or more aspects inorder to provide a basic understanding of such aspects. This summary isnot an extensive overview of all contemplated aspects, and is intendedto neither identify key or critical elements of all aspects nordelineate the scope of any or all aspects. Its sole purpose is topresent some concepts of one or more aspects in a simplified form as aprelude to the more detailed description that is presented later.

An aspect of the disclosure herein relates to methods and systemsconfigured to enable securely searching for physical resources.Attributes of a plurality of shared physical resources are accessed. Anencrypted communication is received and decrypted that providesattributes for a first user. A search is performed, using a first neuralnetwork, for physical resources corresponding to attributes of the userto identity a first set of physical resources using decrypted attributesof the user and attributes of the plurality of physical resources.Search match scores are generated for the first set of physicalresources. A subset of physical resources that at least one other userhas access to is identified. A second neural network identifies usersassociated with the subset of physical resources that have a temporalusage conflict likelihood with the user. Search match scores may beadjusted. The search results may be ranked using the adjusted searchmatch scores, and the ranked search results may be displayed.

An aspect of the present disclosure relates to a system configured toenable searches for physical resources, comprising: a network interface;at least one processing device operable to: access attributes of aplurality of physical resources, wherein a given physical resource inthe plurality of physical resources is configured to be shared amongst aplurality of physical resource users in a time displaced manner; receiveover a network, using the network interface, an encrypted communicationproviding attributes for a first user; decrypt the encryptedcommunication providing attributes for the first user; search forphysical resources in the plurality of physical resources thatcorrespond with attributes of the first user, wherein a first neuralnetwork is used to identity a first set of physical resources in theplurality of physical resources using the decrypted attributes of thefirst user and the attributes of the plurality of physical resources;generate and associate respective match scores with physical resourcesin the first set of physical resources identified using the first neuralnetwork; identify a subset of physical resources comprising physicalresources in the first set of physical resources that at least one otheruser of the system has received a right to use; identify, using a secondneural network, users associated with the subset of physical resourcesthat have at least a first likelihood of temporal usage conflicts withthe first user; based at least in part on the identified usersassociated with the subset of physical resources that have at least thefirst likelihood of temporal usage conflicts with the first user,adjusting one or more match scores associated with one or more physicalresources in the subset of physical resources; generate, based at leastin part on the adjusted match scores, ranked search results for thefirst set of physical resources identified using the first neuralnetwork; provide the ranked search results, generated based at least inpart on the adjusted match scores, to the first user device, the rankedsearch results configured to be displayed by the first user device.

An aspect of the present disclosure relates to a computer-implementedmethod, the method further comprising: accessing, by a computer systemcomprising one or more computing device, attributes of a plurality ofphysical resources, wherein a given physical resource in the pluralityof physical resources is configured to be shared amongst a plurality ofphysical resource users in non-overlapping time periods; receiving overa network at the computer system a communication providing attributesfor a first user; searching for and identifying, using the computersystem, a first set of physical resources, in the plurality of physicalresources, that correspond to the attributes of the first user using theattributes of the plurality of physical resources; generating andassociating, using the computer system, respective match scores withphysical resources in the first set of physical resources; identifying,using the computer system, a subset of physical resources comprisingphysical resources in the first set of physical resources that at leastone other user of the system has received a right to use; identifying,using the computer system, users associated with the subset of physicalresources that have at least a first likelihood of temporal usageconflicts with the first user; based at least in part on the identifiedusers associated with the subset of physical resources that have atleast the first likelihood of temporal usage conflicts with the firstuser, generating, using the computer system, one or more refined matchscores associated with one or more physical resources in the subset ofphysical resources; generating, using the refined match scores, rankedsearch results for at least a portion of the first set of physicalresources; providing the ranked search results, generated using therefined match scores, to the first user device, the ranked searchresults configured to be displayed by the first user device.

An aspect of the present disclosure relates to a non-transitory computerreadable memory having program instructions stored thereon that whenexecuted by a computer system device cause the computer system toperform operations comprising: access attributes of a plurality ofphysical resources, wherein a given physical resource in the pluralityof physical resources is configured to be shared amongst a plurality ofphysical resource users in non-overlapping time periods; accessattributes for a first user; identify, using the attributes of theplurality of physical resources, a first set of physical resources inthe plurality of physical resources that correspond to the attributes ofthe first user; identify a subset of physical resources comprisingphysical resources in the first set of physical resources that at leastone other user of the system has received a right to use; identify usersassociated with the subset of physical resources that have at least afirst likelihood of temporal usage conflicts with the first user; basedat least in part on the identified users associated with the subset ofphysical resources that have at least the first likelihood of temporalusage conflicts with the first user, generate one or more match scoresassociated with one or more physical resources in the subset of physicalresources; generate, based at least in part on the generated matchscores, ranked search results using the first set of physical resources;provide the ranked search results, generated based at least in part onthe generated match scores, to the first user device, the ranked searchresults configured to be displayed by the first user device.

An aspect of the present disclosure relates to allocation of physicalresources based on predicted utilization demand. Historical resourcereservation data for a physical resource is accessed, wherein thephysical resource is shared amongst a plurality of physical resourceusers in a time displaced manner. Historical event data, comprisingevent types and event dates, is accessed. Correlations betweenhistorical reservation data and the historical event data are identifiedand are used to predict future high demand dates. A notification isgenerated regarding a first predicted future high demand date, includinga reservation initiation control via which a reservation may beinitiated for the physical resource for the first predicted future highdemand date. The notification may be transmitted to physical resourceuser(s), and in response to a detection of an activation of thereservation initiation control, a corresponding reservation for thephysical resource is registered and the physical resource may beaccordingly utilized.

An aspect of the present disclosure relates to allocation of physicalresources based on predicted utilization demand utilizing a learningengine. Historical resource reservation data for a physical resource isaccessed, wherein the physical resource is shared amongst physicalresource users in a time displaced manner. Historical event data,comprising event types and event dates, is accessed. Correlationsbetween historical reservation data and the historical event data areidentified and are used by a learning engine to predict future highdemand dates. A notification is generated regarding a predicted futurehigh demand date, including a control via which a request may beinitiated for the physical resource for the first predicted future highdemand date. The notification may be transmitted to physical resourceuser(s), and in response to a detection of an activation of the requestinitiation control, a corresponding allocation for the physical resourceis registered and the physical resource may be accordingly utilized.

An aspect of the present disclosure relates to a system configured toenable allocation of physical resources, comprising: a networkinterface; at least one processing device operable to: access historicalutilization data, comprising occupancy data, for a first physicalresource, the historical utilization data comprising dates at which thefirst physical resource was utilized by a given user, wherein the firstphysical resource is shared amongst a plurality of physical resourceusers in a time displaced manner; access historical event data, thehistorical event date comprising event types and event dates; use aneural network comprising an error function to identify correlationsbetween historical utilization data, comprising occupancy data, and thehistorical event data, comprising event types and event dates; based atleast in part on the identified correlations between historicalutilization data, comprising occupancy data, and the historical eventdata, comprising event types and event dates, predict future highutilization dates for the first physical resource; generate anotification regarding at least a first predicted future highutilization date, the notification including a control via which areservation may be initiated for the first physical resource for thefirst predicted future high utilization date; transmit the notificationregarding the first predicted future high utilization date to at leastone physical resource user in the plurality of physical resources users;at least partly in response to a detection of an activation of thecontrol via which a reservation may be initiated for the first physicalresource for the first predicted future high utilization date,registering a corresponding reservation for the first physical resourcefor the first predicted future high utilization date.

An aspect of the present application relates to a computer-implementedmethod, the method comprising: using a computer system comprising one ormore computer devices, accessing historical demand data comprisingreservation data for a first physical resource, the historical demanddata comprising dates at which the first physical resource was reservedby a given user, wherein the first physical resource is shared amongst aplurality of physical resource users in a time displaced manner;accessing, using the computer system, historical event data, thehistorical event date comprising event types and event dates;identifying, using the computer system, correlations between historicaldemand data, comprising reservation data, and the historical event data,comprising event types and event dates; based at least in part on theidentified correlations between historical demand data, comprisingreservation data, and the historical event data, comprising event typesand event dates, predicting future high demand dates for the firstphysical resource; generating a notification regarding at least a firstpredicted future high demand date, the notification including a controlvia which a reservation may be initiated for the first physical resourcefor the first predicted future high demand date; transmitting thenotification regarding the first predicted future high demand date to atleast one physical resource user in the plurality of physical resourcesusers; at least partly in response to a detection of an activation ofthe control via which a reservation may be initiated for the firstphysical resource for the first predicted future high demand date,registering a corresponding reservation for the first physical resourcefor the first predicted future high demand date.

An aspect of the present disclosure relates to non-transitory computerreadable memory having program instructions stored thereon that whenexecuted by a computer system device cause the computer system toperform operations comprising: access historical demand data, comprisingreservation data, for a first physical resource, the historical demanddata comprising dates at which the first physical resource was reservedby a given user, wherein the first physical resource is shared amongst aplurality of physical resource users in a time displaced manner; accesshistorical event data, the historical event date comprising event typesand event dates; identify correlations between historical demand data,comprising reservation data, and the historical event data, comprisingevent types and event dates; predict future high demand dates for thefirst physical resource based at least in part on the identifiedcorrelations between historical demand data, comprising reservationdata, and the historical event data, comprising event types and eventdates; generate a notification regarding a first predicted future highdemand date; transmit the notification regarding the first predictedfuture high demand date to at least one physical resource user in theplurality of physical resources users; in response to a reservationrequest, register a corresponding reservation for the first physicalresource for the first predicted future high demand date.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Embodiments will now be described with reference to the drawingssummarized below. These drawings and the associated description areprovided to illustrate example aspects of the disclosure, and not tolimit the scope of the invention.

FIG. 1A illustrates an example operating environment.

FIG. 1B illustrates resource search system architecture.

FIG. 1C illustrates an example convolutional neural networkarchitecture.

FIG. 1D illustrates an example data storage architecture.

FIG. 2 illustrates an example search process.

FIG. 3 illustrates a resource utilization prediction process.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example process for identifying resources to addto a resource pool.

FIGS. 5 and 6 illustrate example user interfaces.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

An aspect of the present disclosure relates to systems and methods forenabling searches to be securely performed for physical resources and/orfor potential utilizers of such physical resources to thereby identifypotential or likely matches between such physical resources and/or forpotential utilizers of such physical resources.

Certain conventional search engines are configured to match search queryterms with words and metadata associated with webpages to identify webpages that match the search query terms. However, many such conventionalsearch engines are inadequate to identify matches between physicalresources and potential utilizers of such physical resources,particularly when potential utilizers of a given physical resource willbe sharing such physical resource with others in a non-overlapping,time-displaced manner (e.g., via random time slice assignment, via around robin arrangement, via First Come First Serve (FCFS) allocation,etc.).

Conventional search engines crawl webpages using a spider, where thespider downloads web pages and follows connections on the webpages toidentify new webpages. A search index may be generated and updated. Theindex may include the discovered webpage URLs and associated contentinformation. For example, the associated content information may includethe type of content as identified via a webpage Schema (a semanticvocabulary of tags or microdata), how recently the webpage was updated,and historical engagement by users with the webpage or domain.

When a user enters a search query into a search field, the search engineidentifies pages which are deemed to be relevant from the index. Arelevancy ranking algorithm may be used to hierarchically rank thematching pages into a set of results. Certain search engines take intoaccount user location data in ranking search results, such as inresponse to a query of “movie theaters near me,” where the search enginemay identify movie theaters near the user based on information (e.g., IPaddress) indicating the user's current location.

However, as noted above, many conventional search engines are generallydirected to simply responding to queries from a user. Such conventionalsearch engines are not configured to and do not attempt to find anoptimum or preferred set of different potential physical resourceutilizers based at least in part on attributes of the potential physicalresource utilizers and on attributes of the physical resource.

In contrast to conventional systems, the exemplary systems and processesdescribed herein may be configured to match users with physicalresources based on a variety of user attributes and physical resourceattributes and may determine/predict an optimum or preferred set ofresource utilizers for one or more physical resources (e.g., utilizing aneural network, an expert system, a rules-based systems, and/or asupport vector machine). As will be described, the exemplary systems andprocesses overcome several technical challenges in matching users withphysical resources and in identifying an optimum or preferred set ofresource utilizers for one or more physical resources.

For example, a physical resource may be a property comprising aninhabitable structures. Physical resource attributes may includedimensional data, structure configuration data, surface treatment data,geographic location data, elevation data, weather related data, and/orother data. Different physical resources of a given resource type (e.g.,a house) may have certain common attributes and may have certaindifferent attributes. Different physical resources may be connectedbased on such common resource attributes.

Resource utilizers may also have associated attributes. For example,certain resource utilizers may need to utilize a given physical resourceduring a first common time period, while certain other resourceutilizers may need to utilize a given physical resource during a secondcommon time period. By way of further example, certain resourceutilizers may need certain minimum dimensions or prefer certainmaterials. By way of still further example, certain resource utilizersmay desire proximity to certain amenities or activity areas. Differentphysical resources utilizers may be connected based on such commonresource utilizer attributes.

Where a physical resource attribute of a given physical resourcecorresponds to resource utilizer attribute, a connection may be formed.The greater the number of connections the more likely that a physicalresource will be a match for the resource utilizer. A negativeconnection may be formed, where the resource utilizer affirmatively doesnot want houses with certain characteristics (e.g., located above acertain floor level in a multistory condominium building).

Connections may likewise be formed between potential physical resourceutilizers. Such connections may be positive connections or negativeconnections. For example, where two physical resource utilizers need ordesire certain common physical attributes with respect to a physicalresource, a positive connection may be established. By way of furtherexample, where two physical resource utilizers need or desire to use aphysical resource during the same time frame, a negative connection maybe established as their needs may conflict.

Certain connections (whether positive or negative) may be weighteddifferently than other connections, where the weighting may reflect theimportance of the connection in determining a suitability (e.g., thesuitability of a given physical resource for a given physical resourceutilizer, the suitability for two physical resource utilizers to sharetime sliced access to the physical resource).

Thus, for example, a physical resource utilizer affinity with a givenphysical resource may optionally be determined based at least on thenumber of positive connections and the number of negative connectionswith the physical resource and on the weights associated with respectiveconnections. A match score may optionally be generated using thefollowing formula (e.g., where a connection may be a positive number (1)or a negative number (−1)):

Match score=Connection¹×Weight¹+Connection²×Weight² . . .+Connection^(N)×Weight^(N)

Similarly, a physical resource utilizer's suitability to share aphysical resource with another physical resource utilizer may bedetermined based at least on the number of positive connections and thenumber of negative connections with the other physical resource utilizerand on the weights associated with respective connections. A suitabilityscore may optionally be generated using the following formula (e.g.,where a connection may be a positive number (1) or a negative number(−1)):

Suitabilityscore=ResourceUtilizerConnection¹×Weight¹+ResourceUtilizerConnection²×Weight². . . +ResourceUtilizerConnection^(N)×Weight^(N)

Optionally, a stochastic model (configured to estimate probabilitydistributions of potential outcomes by allowing for random variation inone or more inputs over time) and/or a neural network, such as thosedescribed herein (e.g., a convolutional neural network and/or a Longshort-term memory (LSTM) neural network), may be utilized to identifymatches. For example, the neural network may include one or moreconvolution layers+ ReLU, one or more pooling layers, and a lossfunction, and/or one or more LSTM elements.

Although, certain examples will be discussed with respect to buildingstructures and/or property (e.g., vacation homes, condominiums, houses,camp grounds, etc.), the systems and processes described herein may beapplied to other physical resources, such as motorized vehicles,computer devices and resources, entertainment devices, or other physicalresources.

Further, while certain examples will be discussed with respect tofractionalized ownership interests in a physical resource (e.g., viadirect ownership, via a company that owns the physical resource, such asa limited liability company that owns a vacation home, via syndicatesoperating as private member groups, etc.), where a given user owns oneor more shares in the building structure and property, certain systemsand processes described herein may be applied to non-fractionalizedownership of physical resources.

Optionally, rather than purchasing a share in a physical resource, usersmay be enabled to lease the equivalent share(s). The lease may be in theform of a lease-to-buy program, where at the end of the lease (e.g., a 1year lease, a 2 year lease, a 5 year lease, or other lease length), orearlier, the user may purchase the share(s). Optionally, the user may beenabled to apply some or all of the lease amount previously paid to theshare purchase price. The share purchase price may be the same as theshare purchase price at the time the user entered into a lease or theshare purchase price may be adjusted to reflect the current fair marketvalue of the share or house (e.g., to reflect the increase or decreasesince the lease was entered into). Thus, the lease is configured toprovide the feeling of a purchase.

Optionally, the entity offering the services described herein may act asa condominium board for a given property.

By way of non-limiting example, a given physical resource may have 2shares, 4 shares, 6 shares, 8 shares, 12 shares, 26 shares, on othernumber of shares. Although the ownership interest may be expressed asshares, other mechanisms may be used reflecting a correspondingpercentage ownership interest. For example, if there are a total of 8shares, and a given user has 2 shares, that user owns 25% of thephysical resource (e.g., directly or via an intermediate company).

Identifying which physical resources are suitable for a given user canbe highly complicated and very challenging for a search engine toidentify. For example, where the physical resource is a house (e.g., avacation home), houses have an enormous number of variables, making itexceptionally difficult to conduct a search for a house that is asuitable or optimized match for a user.

By way of illustration, house attributes may include house value, costof a share in the house (or cost of a share in the company that owns thehouse), number of shares in the house (or in the company that owns thehouse), average income of households in neighborhood, geographicallocation, elevation, type of house (e.g., standalone house, attachedhouse, condominium, high rise apartment, etc.), architectural style(e.g., colonial, modern, Mediterranean, cape cod, Spanish-style, cabin,farmhouse, etc.), total square footage of the house, total squarefootage of the property, number of floors, number and size of bedrooms,bedroom configurations (e.g., en suite (having its own bathroom), not ensuite, fireplace, etc.), number and size of bathrooms, bathroomconfigurations (e.g., configured with bathtub, spa tub, shower, toiletroom, etc.), location of the master bedroom (e.g., first floor, secondfloor, etc.), whether the house has certain types of rooms and theirsize (e.g., family room, game room, dining room, breakfast room, livingroom, gym, screening room, etc.), number of fireplaces, existence andsize of backyard, existence and size a swimming pool, existence and sizeof a hot tub, existence and size of a basketball court, existence andsize of a tennis court, whether there is a fenced yard, the existenceand type of views (e.g., no view, ocean view, partial ocean view, lakeview, partial lake view, mountain view, partial mountain view, canyonview, partial canyon view, etc.), the weather (e.g., temperature, snow,hail, humidity, on a month-by-month basis), the distance to neighboringhouses, the distance from ski slopes and/or other winter sportlocations, the distance from hiking trails, the distance from boatingareas, the distance from shopping areas, the distance from culturalinstitutions (e.g., museums, concert halls, libraries, etc.), thedistance from airports, the extent of local public transportation, andso on.

Further, if the house is furnished, the complexity of searching for andidentifying a house suitable for a given user is further increased. Forexample, the furnished house attributes may include furniture style(e.g., modern, traditional, mid-century, etc.), furniture brand,furniture quality level, décor (e.g., paintings, photographs,sculptures, mirrors, decorative items, planters, vases, candle holders,wall clocks, lamps, pillows, etc.), the existence and type of gamingequipment (e.g., foosball table, ping pong table, pool table, gameconsole, etc.), the number and size of televisions, and/or the like.

The house attributes may optionally be populated in whole or in partusing data accessed from one or more local or third party data sources.For example, the house and property square footage may be determinedfrom a municipal tax data store, the architecture style may bedetermined using computer vision to analyze images accessed from mappingservices, furnishing data may be determined using computer vision toanalyze images of the interior of the house, and/or the like. By way offurther example, elevation and other geographical and view relatedinformation (e.g., whether the house is located on a mountain, beach,lakefront, canyon, etc.; whether the house has: no view, an ocean view,a partial ocean view, a lake view, a partial lake view, a mountain view,a partial mountain view, a canyon view, a partial canyon view, etc.) maybe determined using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data and/or byanalyzing images of the area surrounding or adjacent to a house (e.g.,using images from mapping services). By way of still further example,the location of recreational activities (e.g., sports activities,cultural activities, etc.), shopping locations, and the like may bedetermined via one or more mapping services. Weather data may bedetermined via one or more weather databases (e.g., the Climate DataOnline database).

The computer vision analysis of images (e.g., photographs) to determinean architectural style of a given house may be performed using a deepconvolutional network trained using images of different houses ofdifferent architectures, and then comparing the neural network weightsof a photograph of the given house with the neural network weightscorresponding to the images of different houses of differentarchitectures to identify which weights most closely match those of thegiven house. The weights of a given architecture that mostly closelymatch those of the given house may then be assigned to the given house.

The computer vision analysis of images (e.g., photographs) to identifyfurniture, kitchen appliances, decor, and the like may utilize automaticimage tagging wherein metadata in the form of captioning or keywords areautomatically assigned to an image. A neural network (e.g., aconvolutional neural network or a Long short-term memory (LSTM) neuralnetwork) may be utilized in the tagging of image to identify furniture.The neural network may include a preprocessing layer where the image(e.g., in the RGB color space) image is taken and the mean image valuesare subtracted. A deep convolutional neural network may be used togenerate a segmentation map of an input image a multilayer deconvolutionnetwork which may be used on top of the convolutional network. Forexample, the deep convolutional neural network may include convolutionlayers with ReLU (a rectified linear activation function that is apiecewise linear function that outputs the input directly if it ispositive, otherwise, the ReLU function will output zero), max poolinglayers (e.g., to down sample the detection of the most activatedfeatures in feature maps), fully connected layers with ReLU, and asoftmax cross entropy loss function used to adjust neural networkweights via backpropagation.

Although it is technically challenging to search for and identify ahouse that is suitable for a given user, the technical challenge isgreatly increased when the search engine is to identify a potential setof users, where each user in the set is suitable for a given house, andeach user in the set is suitable to share the house with other users inthe set in a time displaced manner (where the users do not utilize thehouse at the same time, but instead each user utilize the house atdifferent times).

The technical challenge is further exacerbated where users are notassigned set periods of time to use the house, but may reserve the housefor a certain number of stays in a given time period, for a certainnumber of days in a given time period, for a certain number of specialdates (e.g., public holidays, popular vacation days, other days ofexpected high demand, etc.) in a given time period, where the house maybe unavailable on certain days (e.g., for maintenance), etc. Examplesystems and methods for reserving a physical resource are described inPatent Application No. 63/053,113, titled “Reservation System”, filedJul. 17, 2020, the content of which is incorporated herein by referencein its entirety, and may be used in conjunction with the systems andmethods described herein to reserve physical resources and otherwise.Functionality described herein and/or in Patent Application No.63/053,113 may be provided via webpages served to a user device via theweb server, via a bowser extension installed on a browser hosted on theuser device, via a dedicated application installed on the user device,and/or otherwise.

The disclosed systems and methods may, for example, optionally determinea user's suitability for a house based on user attributes determinedusing explicit data provided by the user and/or implicit data determinedfor the user. Such explicit data may include user preferences specifiedby the user via a preference user interface. The preference userinterface may enable the user to specify some or all of the attributesdescribed herein and/or other attributes (including, where appropriate,a minimum value (such as a minimum number of bedrooms), a maximum value(such as the maximum share price), or a range of values (such a rangespecifying a minimum-maximum property square footage or share prices).The explicit data may optionally include demographic informationregarding the user (e.g., the user's age, whether the user has apartner, how many children the user has, the age of the children, thetotal number of people who will be staying at the house during theuser's reserved time period, etc.), preferred time periods to use thehouse, desired activities with respect to the house (e.g., sportingactivities, cultural activities, etc.), whether the user prefers to flyor drive to the house, and/or the like. The explicit data may furtherinclude search terms entered by the user via a search field.

The implicit data may include the user's location (e.g., as determinedvia a geolocation application programming interface, via an IP address,etc.), information derived from the user's location (e.g., average houseprices in area, average income levels in area, etc.), websitespreviously visited by the user (e.g., as determined by cookie dataaccessed from the user device), social networking accounts, and/or otherdata.

When conducting a search, the search engine may utilize the explicitlyprovided data and/or the implicit data to search for availableproperties, which may be referred to as houses (e.g., where one or moreshares are available to purchase) that have attributes that at leastpartly match (are “connected to”) the user attributes. The search enginemay provide the search results for display on the user device. Thesearch results may be ranked by the search engine in accordance with howclosely a house's attributes match those of the user (e.g., based on thenumber of matches, and the weight importance of such matches).

A given search result entry for a property/house may include some or allof the following: an image of the house, the number of total shares forthe house, the cost of each share, the total value of the house (e.g.,the total number of shares×the share value, the actual total cost topurchase the house (optionally include the cost of the furnishings andamenities), and/or the fair market value), the name of the house, thelocation of the house (e.g., the city or town the house is located in),the number of bedrooms, the number of baths, the square footage of thehouse, and/or other facts regarding the house.

In response to the user selecting a search result entry (e.g., byclicking on an entry), additional information regarding the house may bepresented. For example, additional images may be presented, a video tourof the house may be presented, the actual house address may bepresented, and a description of the amenities of the house and thelocale of the house may be presented. Optionally, a download link may beprovided, which when activated, will cause a document (e.g., a PDFdocument) to be downloaded to the user system providing some or all ofthe foregoing property information and/or other house-relatedinformation. Optionally, a map and/or a link to a map may be providedwhere the map shows the location of the house, the surrounding area,points of interest, streets (including street names). Optionally, asatellite view may be accessible. Optionally, the map be zoomable.Optionally, nearby facilities (e.g., shopping facilities, entertainmentfacilities, restaurants, etc.) and attractions may be shown on the map,optionally with the distance to the house indicated.

An interface may be provided via which the user may request a virtual orin person tour of the house. Optionally, a chat interface is providedvia which the user can request additional information from a serviceperson, and may initiate a share purchase. Optionally, a control isprovided via which the user may purchase one or more shares (e.g., withfew, or even one purchase control activation).

The user may instruct the search engine to further refine the search byspecifying one or more filters (which may be treated as additionalsearch terms) relating to one or more of the house attributes or theuser attributes.

Optionally, if a given house identified as a match already has sharesowned by one or more other users, the search engine will attempt todetermine how compatible the user conducting the search is with theexisting share owners using the positive and/or negative connections.For example, user attributes that indicate a certain likelihood of aconflict in terms of a desire to utilize the house during the same timeperiod may cause a house to be ranked lower in the search results oreliminated from the search results altogether. The greater the number ofexisting stakeholders (e.g., shareholders) the searching user ispredicted to have a time conflict with, the more the house ranking willbe reduced and/or the more likely the house will be eliminated from thesearch results altogether.

By way of illustration, if an existing stakeholder has school agechildren and the searching user has school age children, there may be agreater likelihood of a conflict in a desired house usage period (e.g.,school vacations). By way of further illustration, if an existingstakeholder has school age children and the searching user does not havechildren, there may be a lesser likelihood of a conflict in a desiredhouse usage period. By way of yet further illustration, if an existingstakeholder enjoys participating in winter sports and the searching useralso enjoys participating in winter sports, there may be a greaterlikelihood of a conflict in a desired house usage period (e.g., duringthe winter snow season or other seasonal conflict). By way of stillfurther illustration, if an existing stakeholder enjoys participating inwinter sports and the searching user enjoys participating in summersports, there may be a lesser likelihood of a conflict in a desiredhouse usage period.

A given physical resource may be shared amongst users. Conventionalresource allocation systems disadvantageously fail to predict highdemand periods of resource utilization, and hence fail to adequatelyallocation such physical resource amongst the sharing users.

The systems and methods described herein may also be configured toidentify/predict days of likely high demand among stakeholders (whichmay be referred to as a special date). For example, a learning engine(e.g., a neural network) or algorithm may be utilized to model userreservation behavior with respect to a house. The learning engine may betrained using a historical set of reservations, where the learningengine makes predictions as to the likelihood a house will be reservedon a given day. A loss function may be used to adjust the neural networkweights based on the accuracy of a given prediction.

Optionally, a neural network may be configured as a Long short-termmemory (LSTM) neural network An LSTM which is a type of recurrent neuralnetwork (RNN) architecture having feedback connections, that may beparticularly advantageous in deep learning applications, such as inpredicting human behavior (e.g., house reservations). LSTMs are designedto preserve information that may be relevant for future tasks for longperiod of time so that the past information can be connected to apresent task.

A given LSTM unit may include a cell and regulators used to regulate theflow of information inside the LSTM unit. For example, the regulatorsmay include an input gate, an output gate and a forget gate. The cellmay be used to keep track of the dependencies between the elements inthe input sequence. Because the cell comprises a memory unit, the cellcan process data sequentially and retain its hidden state through time.

A prediction engine may include a data pre-processing component, amulti-layer long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network for userbehaviors, a pattern adapter for mining behavior patterns, and attentioncomponent configured to adjust the weights of the LSTM and the patternadapter.

As discussed above, the neural network may be trained in a supervisedmanner on a set of training data in order to determine network weightsso as to reduce the error/loss function. For example, the connectionsbetween the LSTM gates may be assigned weights determined duringtraining, which determine the operation of the LSTM gates.

If a given date (or date range) is predicted to be a high demand date,such information may be used to generate notifications which may betransmitted to one or more stakeholders (e.g., via email, messagingservice, an app notification, or otherwise) informing such stakeholdersthat such date (or date range) is predicted to be in high demand andthat they should make a reservation as soon as possible if they want toreserve the house for such date.

Optionally the notification may be first transmitted to the stakeholderthat has gone the longest time since reserving a special date and thenotification may include a reservation confirmation control. Optionally,the house may be automatically reserved in such stakeholder's name for aperiod of time (e.g., 24 hours, 48 hours, or other time period), and ifthe stakeholder confirms the reservation (e.g., by activating theconfirm reservation control), the reservation will maintained. If thestakeholder does not activate the confirm reservation control within thetime period (or activates a reservation release control provided in thenotification), the reservation will be released. The process may berepeated for the stakeholder that has gone the next longest time sincereserving a special date, and so on.

Optionally, instead, the notification may be transmitted to all housestakeholders at substantially the same time, and the reservation may beprovided on a first come first serve basis (e.g., where the firststakeholder that confirms the reservations is assigned the reservation,so long as it does not violate a reservation rule, such as thosedescribed in Patent Application No. 63/053,113, titled “ReservationSystem”, filed Jul. 17, 2020). Optionally, where the notification istransmitted to all house stakeholders, such notification may include adifferent link or code associated with the reservation control for eachhouse stakeholder. Thus, when a stakeholder activates the reservationcontrol, the system may be able to uniquely identify the stakeholder andinitiate the reservation process for the identified stakeholder.

Optionally, in addition to or instead of determining a high demand datefor the house as a whole, the system may identify dates that aparticular user is likely to want to make a reservation (which may bereferred to as a special personal date). For example, suchidentification may be performed based on historical reservation data forthe user (e.g., did the user reserve the same date in multiple years)and/or on personal data for the user (e.g., a wedding anniversary, abirthday, etc.). If a given date (or date range) is predicted to be aspecial personal date for the user, such information may be used togenerate a notification which may be transmitted to the user informingthe user that such date (or date range) is predicted to be a date thatthe user may want to make a reservation for based on past history and/orpersonal data (e.g., a wedding anniversary, a birthday, etc.).Optionally, such notification may not be sent if the date is generally aspecial date for stakeholders (e.g., a federal holiday). Optionally, thenotification is not transmitted if, based on reservation rules, the useris not eligible to reserve the house for the special personal date(e.g., as a result of the user's pending and/or past reservation).

Optionally, the house may be automatically reserved in such user's namefor a period of time (e.g., 24 hours, 48 hours, or other time period),and if the user confirms the reservation (e.g., by activating theconfirm reservation control), the reservation will maintained. If theuser does not activate the confirm reservation control within the timeperiod (or activates a reservation release control provided in thenotification), the reservation will be released.

Optionally, the system will enable a given stakeholder to exchange usageof the stakeholder's rights to use their house for a period of time witha stakeholder in another house. Such an exchange (and correspondingreservations for specific dates) may be received and stored by thesystem. Optionally, if there is price differential in the share value ofone house as compared to the other house, the stakeholder with the lowervalue share may be charged a prorated amount (the value of the datesreserved at the higher share value hose minus the value of the datesreserved at the lower share value house), and such prorated amount maybe provided to the other stakeholder in whole or a portion thereof.

Certain of the foregoing processes may be utilized to determine whathouse (or other physical resource) attributes are more significant inmaking a house (or other physical resource) attractive to potentialusers at different share values. Those attributes may then beadvantageously used to identify other houses similar attributes that arelikely to be attractive to potential share purchasers. Such identifiedhouses may then be offered to potential stakeholders as describedelsewhere herein.

For example, the common attributes of houses for which shares werepurchased may be identified. In addition, the speed at which the shareswere purchased may be taken into account. For example, common attributesof houses whose shares sold within a first amount of time (e.g., 30days) may be identified that are not present in houses that sold in asecond amount of time (e.g., greater than 30 days).

Graph theory may be applied to determine the connectedness betweendifferent houses. Attributes of a given house may be rated, and suchattributes can be compared with that of other houses (e.g., houses whichmay be potentially offered to potential stakeholders) to determine howsimilar the houses are. Houses can then be placed into a network, witheach house placed on a node, and edges between similar houses, andrating how strong the tie is between two houses.

When a house has its shares sell quickly, the system may identify otherhouses (that have not yet been purchased or reserved to offer for saleto potential share purchasers) that have the strongest edges to thequickly selling house. Such identified house may then be offered forsale as similarly described above (e.g., where shares may be sold tomultiple users to provide fractional ownership interests). If theidentified house sells quickly as well, then the attributes common withthe original house may be weighted more heavily as being attractive topotential purchasers. If the identified house sells significantly moreslowly, then the attributes common with the original house may beweighted less heavily, indicating that such attributes may be lessattractive to potential purchasers. Thus, the graph may be utilized toassist in identifying which houses should be offered to users.

Optionally, crowd sourcing may be used in identifying houses to offerfor fractionalized ownership. For example, a tool may be provided thatsits on top of a real estate website offering houses for sale in thetraditional non-fractionalized sale method. The tool may be provided viaJavaScript embedded in or called by the real estate website webpage orthe tool may be provided via a browser extension. The tool may calculatea share price for a house identified on the real estate website webpagefor different scenarios (e.g., assuming that there are 2 shares, 4shares, 6 shares, 8 shares, etc.) based on the listed house price,estimate cost of housing and amenities (which may be based on thehouse's listed square footage, the number of bedrooms, the number andtypes of other rooms, etc.), the cost associated with forming the entityacquiring the house (e.g., a limited liability company), etc.

If the user is interested in purchasing one or more shares in theacquiring entity, if one were formed, the user may activate a controlvia the tool which will cause a link to the property to be transmittedto the system of the entity that offers houses for fractional ownership.The entity may review the link, may place the house (e.g., itsattributes) in the graph and/or otherwise evaluate the house attributes,and decide whether to offer the house for fractional ownership to thereferring user and other users. If the entity decided to offer the housefor fractional ownership, it may be posted as described above andidentified in searches.

Certain example aspects will now be described with reference to thefigures.

An example system architecture that may be utilized to perform servicesdescribed herein (e.g., search services, matching services, special dateprediction services, graphing services, and/or other services describedherein) will now be discussed with reference to FIG. 1A. The varioussystems and devices may communicate with each other over one or wiredand/or wireless networks 100 (e.g., the Internet, Ethernet, or otherwide area or local area network). In the illustrated embodiment, aresource search and matching system 102 may be hosted on one or moreservers. The resource search and matching system 102 may be cloud-basedand may be accessed by one or more user computer systems 110, 112 overthe network 100. User computer systems 110, 112, 114 and data sourcecomputer systems 104, 106, 108 may be able to share softwareapplications, computing resources, and data storage provided by theresource search and matching system 102.

The user computer systems 110, 112, 114 and data source computer systems104, 106, 108 may be in the form of a desktop computer, laptop computer,tablet computer, mobile phone, smart television, dedicated serversystem, cloud-based system, and/or other computing system. The datasource systems 110, 112, 114 may supply various items of data discussedherein, such as data that may be used to determine attributes associatedwith a physical resource (e.g., a house) and attributes associated witha user. By way of illustrated example, the data source systems mayinclude GIS databases, map databases, tax databases, permittingdatabases, weather databases, demographic databases, and so on.

A user computer system and a data source computer system may includeuser input and output devices, such a displays (touch or non-touchdisplays), speakers, microphones, trackpads, mice, pen input, printers,haptic feedback devices, cameras, and the like. A user system or datasource computer system may include wireless and/or wired networkinterfaces via which the computer systems may communicate with eachother or the resource search and matching system 102 over one or morenetworks.

User interfaces described herein are optionally configured to presentdata (optionally in real time) from sources described herein and toreceive user commands, which may optionally be executed by the resourcesearch and matching system 102 in real time or in batch mode.

A client (e.g., a system browser or a dedicated network resource accessapplication hosted by a user computer system) may initiate a handshakingmessage to the resource search and matching system 102. The handshakingmessage may identify the cipher suites supported by the client and othercryptographic information (e.g., the maximum supported version oftransport layer security or secure sockets layer, the client's order ofpreference). The handshaking message may optionally identify datacompression methods supported by the user computer system. Thehandshaking message may include a random byte string that may be used ingenerating encryption keys.

The resource search and matching system 102 may respond to the clientwith a handshaking signal which identifies the cipher suite suit andencryption version (selected from those identified in the clienthandshaking message) that will be used. The resource search and matchingsystem 102 message may also include a session ID and another random bytestring. The resource search and matching system 102 may additionallytransmit its digital certificate. The resource search and matchingsystem 102 may also transmit a client certificate request thatidentifies the types of certificates supported and the DistinguishedNames of acceptable Certification Authorities (CAs), which the clientmay verify.

The random byte string transmitted by the client to the resource searchand matching system 102 may be utilized by both the client and theresource search and matching system 102 to generate a secret key thatmay be used for encrypting subsequent message data. Asymmetricencryption may be utilized to generate a shared secret key. The randombyte string itself may be encrypted with the resource search andmatching system 102′s public key.

By way of further example, a given item of data may encrypted using anAES-128 key or public key cryptography/asymmetrical cryptography. Ifsymmetric encryption is used, than the encryption key and the decryptionkey may be the same key. If public key cryptography/asymmetricalcryptography is used, then a public key may be used to encrypt the dataand a private key may be generated to decrypt the data.

Optionally, a version of the user interfaces described herein may beenhanced for use with a small touch screen (e.g., 4 to 13 inchesdiagonal), such as that of a mobile phone or a tablet computer. Forexample, the orientation of the controls may be relatively more verticalrather than horizontal to reflect the height/width ratio of typicalmobile device display. Further, the user interfaces may utilizecontextual controls that are displayed in response to an inferred userdesire, rather than displaying a large number of tiny controls at thesame time (which would make them hard to select or manipulate using afinger).

FIG. 1B depicts a block diagram illustrating an embodiment of examplecomponents of the example resource search and matching system 102hosting a resource search and matching system module 134B. The systemincludes an arrangement of computer hardware and software componentsthat may be used to implement aspects of the present disclosure. Thoseskilled in the art will appreciate that the example components mayinclude more (or fewer) components than those depicted in FIG. 1B.

The system hosting the resource search and matching system module 134Bmay include one or more processing units 120B (e.g., a general purposeprocessor and/or a high speed graphics processor with integratedtransform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and/or rendering engines),one or more network interfaces 122B, a non-transitory computer-readablemedium drive 124B, and an input/output device interface 126B, all ofwhich may communicate with one another by way of one or morecommunication buses.

The network interface 122B may provide connectivity to andcommunications with one or more networks or computing systems (e.g., oneor more of the systems illustrated in FIG. 1A). The processing unit 120Bmay thus communicate information and instructions to and/or from othercomputing devices, systems, or services via a network. The processingunit 120B may also communicate to and from memory 124B and furtherprovide output information via the input/output device interface 126B.The input/output device interface 126B may also accept input from one ormore input devices, such as a keyboard, mouse, digital pen, touchscreen, microphone, camera, other sensors, etc.

The memory 128B may contain computer program instructions that theprocessing unit 120B may execute in order to implement one or moreaspects of the present disclosure. The memory 120B generally includesRAM, ROM (and variants thereof, such as EEPROM) and/or other persistentor non-transitory computer-readable storage media. The memory 120B maystore an operating system 132B that provides computer programinstructions for use by the processing unit 120B in the generaladministration and operation of the resource search and matching systemmodule 1348, including it components.

The resource search and matching system module 134B may include a GUIcomponent configured to generate graphical user interfaces which may bedisplayed on user systems, a search component configured to performsearch functions as described herein, a matching component configured toperform matching functions as described herein, a graph componentconfigure to perform graph functions as described herein, and a specialdate component configured to predict special dates for a given housestakeholder (e.g., a shareholder), for all house stakeholder, and/or forstakeholder of multiple houses

The memory 128B may store user accounts including user preferences,explicitly provided data, inferred data, demographic data, shareownership data, user reservation data, user-specific special dates, usercontact information, and/or other user data discussed herein.Optionally, in addition or instead, the data may be stored remotely on acloud-based or other networked data store. The account data mayoptionally be stored in a relational database, an SQL database, a NOSQLdatabase, a hierarchical database, an object oriented database, a graphdatabase, and/or other database type.

The memory 128B may include an interface module 130B. The interfacemodule 130B can be configured to facilitate generating one or moreinterfaces through which a compatible computing device may send data to,or it may receive data from the resource search and matching module1348.

The modules or components described above may also include additionalmodules or may be implemented by computing devices that may not bedepicted in FIGS. 1A and 1B. For example, although the interface module130B and the resource search and matching module 134B are identified inFIG. 1B as single modules, the modules may be implemented by two or moremodules and in a distributed manner. By way of further example, theprocessing unit 120B may include a general purpose processor and agraphics processing unit (GPU). The system hosting the resource searchand matching module 134B may offload compute-intensive portions of theapplications to the GPU, while other code may run on the general purposeprocessor. The GPU may include hundreds or thousands of core processorsconfigured to process tasks in parallel. The GPU may include high speedmemory dedicated for graphics processing tasks. As another example, thesystem hosting the resource search and matching system module 134B andits components can be implemented by network servers, applicationservers, cloud-base systems, database servers, combinations of the same,or the like, configured to facilitate data transmission to and from datastores, and other party systems via one or more networks. Accordingly,the depictions of the modules are illustrative in nature.

Referring now to FIG. 1C, an example convolutional neural networkarchitecture is illustrated. As discussed herein, a neural network maybe used to identify and match users with physical resources, performcomputer vision operations (identify and classify objects, such asfurniture), and may be used to automatically identify an architecturalstyle of a house.

In this example, the neural network includes convolution+ReLU layers,which together with the pooling layers act as feature extractors withrespect to an input image (e.g., an image of an exterior or interior ofa house), and the fully connected layer acts as a classifier. There maybe more or fewer layers than those illustrated in FIG. 1C. Further,there does not need to be a pooling layer for each convolution+ReLUlayer.

The convolutional neural network may be trained. The neural networkfilters and weights may be initialized with random values. A trainingimage may be used as in input. A forward propagation step may beperformed (e.g., convolution, ReLU, and pooling operations, and forwardpropagation in the fully connected layer) and the convolutional neuralnetwork may generate output probabilities for each class. The totalerror at the output layer may be calculated using an error function.Backpropagation may be used to update filter values and node weights toreduce or minimize the output error. The weights may be adjusted inproportion to their contribution to the total error. This process may berepeated for multiple training images (e.g., images of houses orfurnishings) so as to train the convolutional neural network tocorrectly identify image objects.

FIG. 1D illustrates an example data storage architecture. A data store100D may include one or more databases that store one or more records.The stored data may be used by various processes described herein. Forexample, the data may be used in search for matching physical resourcesfor a user, such as a user having a resource searcher/matchingapplication 110D installed on the user's device or accessed via abrowser. By way of illustration, user may be searching for a property inwhich the user may acquire a share, as discussed elsewhere herein. Thesearch may be performed using the search/matching component 102D. Thesearch and matching process may use historical and predicted schedulingdata, existing share owner data, property attributes, and/or searcherdata in identifying potential property matches.

By way of further example, the data may be used to predict dates of highutilization for a given physical resource and provide such predictionsvia a resource utilizer application 108D. For example, the resourceutilizer may own a share in a property as discussed elsewhere herein.The resource utilizer application 108D may also be used to reserve aproperty in which the user owns a share.

A physical resource data store 102D may include details/attributesregarding various resources, such as residences/properties. For example,physical resource data store 102D may store for one or more propertiessome or all of the following data: geographic location, location type(e.g., coast, lake, river, mountain, river, canyon, etc.), house value,cost of a share in the house, number of shares in the house, averageincome of households in neighborhood, elevation, architectural style,total square footage of the house, total square footage of the property,number of floors, number and size of bedrooms, bedroom configurations,number and size of bathrooms, bathroom configurations, location of themaster bedroom, whether the house has certain types of rooms and theirsize, number of fireplaces, existence and size of backyard, existenceand size a swimming pool, existence and size of a hot tub, existence andsize of a basketball court, existence and size of a tennis court,whether there is a fenced yard, the existence and type of views, weatherdata for different months and/or seasons, the distance to neighboringhouses, the distance from ski slopes and/or other winter sportlocations, the distance from hiking trails, the distance from boatingareas, the distance from shopping areas, the distance from culturalinstitutions, the distance from airports, the extent of publictransportation, and/or other attributes.

A physical resource utilizers data store 104D may storedetails/attributes regarding physical resource utilizers, such as ownersof shares in a given property. For example, the data may include thenumber of persons in the share owner's family, the address/geographicallocation of the owner's primary residence, special dates of interests,marital/partner status, number of children, age of children, preferredsporting activities, preferred cultural activities, other userattributes disclosed herein, and/or the like.

A scheduling and utilization data store 106D may store accessinformation (e.g., for a property), future scheduled reservations forutilization of a given property, historical scheduled reservations forutilization of a given property, historical scheduled events (e.g.,concerts, festivals, concert sporting events, conventions, art shows,and/or other events that typically attract significant or very largenumbers of people), future scheduled events, correlations between eventsand/or seasons on property reservations, and/or the like.

FIG. 2 illustrates an example process for match resource utilizers withphysical resources. At block 202, the process detects that a user deviceis accessing a network resource, such as a webpage associated with anoffer of fractional ownership of a physical resource, such as a house(which may include surrounding land). At block 204, certain userattributes may be determined, such as location and user characteristicsfrom the user's browsing history. For example, GOOGLE ANALYTICS may beutilized to determine certain demographics regarding a user (e.g., age,income, etc.).

At block 206, user attributes may be utilized to search a data store ofa pool of physical resources (e.g., vacation houses) whose attributesmore closely correspond to the user's attributes. For example, a user'sincome level and location may be used, in part, to identify houses whoseshare prices and locations are more likely to be suitable for the user.As discussed elsewhere herein, a formula, trained neural network orother learning engine may optionally be used to identify matches. Amatch score may be generated that reflects the closeness of the match.

If there is not any or a sufficient user attributes available to conductthe search and identify corresponding matches in an adequate manner,optionally a default set of houses may be presented to the user in adefault order (where the presented houses may optionally be limited tothose that are still available for fractional ownership).

If there are sufficient user attributes available to conduct the searchand identify matches in an adequate manner, at block 208, adetermination may be made as whether are any existing stakeholders(e.g., shareholders or other users that have a fractionalized interestin a given house) in a given house. If a determination is made thatthere are existing stakeholders, user attributes for such holders mayaccessed from a data store.

At block 210, a determination may be made that attributes associatedwith the existing stakeholders for the given house and that attributesassociated with the user conflict. For example, a conflict may be onethat makes it more likely that the user and an existing stakeholder willwant to use the house at the same time (e.g., where the user and thestakeholder have children of similar ages and may have similar vacationtimings). Such a conflict determination may be made using a formula, atrained neural network and/or other learning engine. The existenceand/or degree of the conflict may be used to adjust or refine thecorresponding match score for the given house (where the adjusted orrefined match score may be a new score or may be the original scoremultiplied by an adjustment factor). For example, the greater theconflicts (e.g., the greater the number and weight of conflicts) thegreater the reduction in a match score for the given house.

At block 212, the match scores (as modified due to conflicts) may beutilized to generate ranked search results. Optionally, the searchresults may be automatically filtered to eliminate houses whose matchscores fall beneath a specified threshold (and so may unlikely to besuitable for the user). The ranked search results may then be providedfor presentation on the user device.

At block 214, the user may provide additional search filters. Suchfilters may be expressly provided, such as search terms entered into asearch field, or user specified house attributes or ranges of attributes(e.g., minimum number of bedrooms, presence of a pool, state in whichthe house is located, minimum number of shares in the house, maximumnumber of shares in the house, share price range, other attributesdiscussed herein, etc.). Certain filters may be based on user-provideddata regarding the user (e.g., typical vacation dates, income,marital/partner status, number of children, age of children, preferredsporting activities, preferred cultural activities, preferred restaurantcuisines/styles, view preferences (e.g., ocean, mountain, etc.), userdemographic and preference data, other user attributes disclosed herein,and/or the like). The process may then proceed to block 206, and theprocess of generating and presenting ranked search results may berepeated using the filters.

As discussed elsewhere herein, a learning engine (e.g., a neuralnetwork) or algorithm may be utilized to predict dates that will be inhigh demand for a house that has multiple stakeholders whose desire toreserve the house may be conflict. For example, as discussed above, aLong short-term memory (LSTM) neural may be used that is especiallyefficacious in predicting human behavior (e.g., user housereservations).

FIG. 3 illustrates an example process of predicting high demand dates.At block 302, historical house utilization data for the house isaccessed from a data store. Historical house utilization data mayinclude dates reserved for the house in the past by users and/or datesthat users attempted to reserve. For example, if one user reserved thehouse for a given date (which may include several consecutive days), andanother user subsequently requested a reservation for the same date andwas refused because the house was already reserved, such refusedreservation may be included in the category of attempted reservation. Byway of further, if one user reserved the house for a given date andother users were placed on a waitlist, each person on the waitlist maycount towards attempted reservations.

At block 304, historical event data (including event types, dates,and/or time) is accessed from one or more data sources (which may beoperated by third parties, such as ticketing databases, venue databases,sport team databases, museum databases, etc.). Such event data mayinclude past concerts, festivals, sporting events, conventions, artshows, and/or other events that typically attract significant or verylarge numbers of people.

At block 306, correlations, if any, are identified between thehistorical house utilization data and the historical event data. Thenumber of attempted reservations for a given date that corresponds to adate of an historical event, may indicate the strength of thecorrelation. For example, if four out of eight stakeholders reserved orattempted to reserve the house for a weekend at which a yearly musicfestival takes place, the process may determine that there is a strongcorrelation between the yearly music festival and the high demand. Thecorrelation may be further strengthened for each year that there is highdemand for the house that correlates with the occurrence of the musicfestival (even if the date of the music festival may vary from year toyear).

At block 308, the correlations, the strength of correlations, and thedates and types of future scheduled events may be utilized to predicthigh utilization dates. For example, if a past recurring event isassociated with high utilization demand, the process may predict thatthere will be high demand on a future date of the event. By way offurther example, if there is historical high utilization demand for avariety of different art shows at a museum, a prediction may be madethat upon the occurrence of a future art show at the museum there willbe high demand.

At block 310, a high utilization notification may be generatedidentifying a predicted high utilization date or a set of dates (e.g.,predicted high utilization date for the coming year or other selectedtime period). The notification may optionally indicate why the date ispredicted to be a high utilization date. For example, the notificationmay identify an event associated with the high utilization date and mayindicate that there has been high demand in the past on dates associatedwith the event. The notification may optionally be transmitted to allstakeholders in the house. The notification may include a control, whichwhen activated will cause a reservation to be automatically requestedfor the corresponding date.

Optionally, rather than transmitting the high utilization notificationto all stakeholders, the notification may first be transmitted to one,selected stakeholder. For example, the stakeholder that has had thefewest or most aged reservations for special dates may be identified,and the notification may first be transmitted to the identifiedstakeholder. The notification may indicate that the stakeholder has aspecified limited period of time to make the reservation before otherstakeholders receive the notification. If the identified stakeholderdoes not make the reservation within the specified time period, thenotification may be transmitted to the stakeholder that has the nextmost aged reservations for special dates and so on, or, alternativelythe notification may be transmitted to all stakeholders.

At block 312, a reservation request is received from a stakeholder(e.g., via an activation of a reservation control in the notification).At block 314, a determination is made as to whether, based on thestakeholder's reservations for future dates and/or past reservations,the stakeholder is eligible for the reservation. If it is determinedthat the stakeholder is ineligible for the reservation, at block 318,the reservation is rejected and the stakeholder is so notified.Optionally, prior to sending a notification to a stakeholder, adetermination may be passed as to whether the stakeholder is ineligiblefor the reservation, and if so, the notification may be inhibited frombeing transmitted to the ineligible stakeholder.

If the stakeholder is eligible, at block 318, stakeholder's reservationis recorded. The stakeholder may then utilize the house for thecorresponding date. If a subsequent reservation request is received fromanother stakeholder at block 320, at block 322 the request will berejected and a corresponding reservation denial message may be generatedand transmitted to the requesting stakeholder. Optionally, an interfacemay be provided via which the requesting stakeholder may request to beplaced on a waiting list for the date, in the event the originalrequester cancels her reservation.

It may be advantageous to determine what house (or other physicalresource) attributes are more significant in making a house (or otherphysical resource) attractive to potential users at different sharevalues. Those attributes may then be advantageously used to identifyother houses similar attributes that are likely to be attractive topotential share purchasers (e.g., using graph theory as discussedelsewhere herein). Such identified houses may then be added to a pool ofavailable houses and offered to potential stakeholders as describedelsewhere herein. FIG. 4 illustrates such an example process.

At block 402, the acquisition history for physical resources, such ashouses may be accessed from a data store. For example, the speed inwhich shares in different houses were purchased once posted for sale maybe determined. At block 404, attributes of the different houses may beaccessed from a data store.

For example, house attributes may include some or all of the following:house value, cost of a share in the house, number of shares in thehouse, average income of households in neighborhood, geographicallocation, elevation, architectural style, total square footage of thehouse, total square footage of the property, number of floors, numberand size of bedrooms, bedroom configurations, number and size ofbathrooms, bathroom configurations, location of the master bedroom,whether the house has certain types of rooms and their size, number offireplaces, existence and size of backyard, existence and size aswimming pool, existence and size of a hot tub, existence and size of abasketball court, existence and size of a tennis court, whether there isa fenced yard, the existence and type of views, the weather, thedistance to neighboring houses, the distance from ski slopes and/orother winter sport locations, the distance from hiking trails, thedistance from boating areas, the distance from shopping areas, thedistance from cultural institutions, the distance from airports, theextent of public transportation, or other attributes.

At block 404, common attributes may be identified for houses whoseshares were sold within a first, relatively quick time period (e.g., 30days). At block 406, common attributes may be identified for houseswhose shares were sold within a second, somewhat slower time period(e.g., greater than 30 days or 31-60 days). Optionally, the same processof identifying common attributes may be determined for additional timeperiods (e.g., 61-90 days, 91-160 days, 161-365 days, etc.).

At block 408, correlations between the speed of share acquisition andhouse attributes may be determined. For example, attributes may beidentified that are common to those houses that sold in the first periodof time, but are not present in attributes of houses sold in a secondperiod of time. Such attributes may then be identified as potentiallycontributing to the enhanced attractiveness of houses to potentialacquirers of shares.

At block 410, a search may be conducted of one or more data stores(e.g., real estate databases or websites) to identify houses beingoffered for sale that have some or all of those attributes identified ascontributing to a relatively fast sale of house shares. At block 412,one or more of such houses may be added to the resource pool of housesand shares in such houses may be offered for sale as similarly describedelsewhere herein.

Certain example user interfaces will now be described that enablecertain functionality described herein to be provided to users.

Referring to FIG. 5, an example user interface is illustrated displayinga first set of houses. The set of houses may be selected using theprocess illustrated in FIG. 2 and/or may have been added to the set viathe process illustrated in FIG. 4. Optionally, the set of houses may bea default houses that are not selected based on user attributes.

Referring to FIG. 5, the user interface displays images, cost, number ofbedrooms, number of bathrooms, and square footages of several houses. Inresponse to the user selecting one of the houses (e.g., by clicking on alinked element, such as text or an image), the example user interface ofFIG. 6 may be displayed on the user device.

The user interface illustrated in FIG. 6, may provide additional imagesof the selected house, the name of the house, the house address, thecost of a share in the house, the number of bedrooms in the house, thenumber of bathrooms in the house, and the square footage of the house.In addition or instead, other house attributes described herein may bepresented. Optionally, some or all of the information presented via theuser interface illustrated in FIG. 6 may also be presented via the userinterface illustrated in FIG. 5.

Thus, systems and methods are described for enabling searches to besecurely performed for physical resources and/or for potential utilizersof such physical resources to thereby identify potential or likelymatches between such physical resources and/or for potential utilizersof such physical resources (e.g., vacation homes). Further, systems andmethods are described for predicting high utilization dates for physicalresources. In addition, systems and methods are described for physicalresources that are suitable to add to a pool of physical resources.

The methods and processes described herein may have fewer or additionalsteps or states and the steps or states may be performed in a differentorder. Not all steps or states need to be reached. The methods andprocesses described herein may be embodied in, and fully or partiallyautomated via, software code modules executed by one or more generalpurpose computers. The code modules may be stored in any type ofcomputer-readable medium or other computer storage device. Some or allof the methods may alternatively be embodied in whole or in part inspecialized computer hardware. The systems described herein mayoptionally include displays, user input devices (e.g., touchscreen,keyboard, mouse, voice recognition, etc.), network interfaces, etc.

The results of the disclosed methods may be stored in any type ofcomputer data repository, such as relational databases and flat filesystems that use volatile and/or non-volatile memory (e.g., magneticdisk storage, optical storage, EEPROM and/or solid state RAM).

The various illustrative logical blocks, modules, routines, andalgorithm steps described in connection with the embodiments disclosedherein can be implemented as electronic hardware, computer software, orcombinations of both. To clearly illustrate this interchangeability ofhardware and software, various illustrative components, blocks, modules,and steps have been described above generally in terms of theirfunctionality. Whether such functionality is implemented as hardware orsoftware depends upon the particular application and design constraintsimposed on the overall system. The described functionality can beimplemented in varying ways for each particular application, but suchimplementation decisions should not be interpreted as causing adeparture from the scope of the disclosure.

Moreover, the various illustrative logical blocks and modules describedin connection with the embodiments disclosed herein can be implementedor performed by a machine, such as a general purpose processor device, adigital signal processor (DSP), an application specific integratedcircuit (ASIC), a field programmable gate array (FPGA) or otherprogrammable logic device, discrete gate or transistor logic, discretehardware components, or any combination thereof designed to perform thefunctions described herein. A general purpose processor device can be amicroprocessor, but in the alternative, the processor device can be acontroller, microcontroller, or state machine, combinations of the same,or the like. A processor device can include electrical circuitryconfigured to process computer-executable instructions. In anotherembodiment, a processor device includes an FPGA or other programmabledevice that performs logic operations without processingcomputer-executable instructions. A processor device can also beimplemented as a combination of computing devices, e.g., a combinationof a DSP and a microprocessor, a plurality of microprocessors, one ormore microprocessors in conjunction with a DSP core, or any other suchconfiguration. Although described herein primarily with respect todigital technology, a processor device may also include primarily analogcomponents. A computing environment can include any type of computersystem, including, but not limited to, a computer system based on amicroprocessor, a mainframe computer, a digital signal processor, aportable computing device, a device controller, or a computationalengine within an appliance, to name a few.

The elements of a method, process, routine, or algorithm described inconnection with the embodiments disclosed herein can be embodieddirectly in hardware, in a software module executed by a processordevice, or in a combination of the two. A software module can reside inRAM memory, flash memory, ROM memory, EPROM memory, EEPROM memory,registers, hard disk, a removable disk, a CD-ROM, or any other form of anon-transitory computer-readable storage medium. An exemplary storagemedium can be coupled to the processor device such that the processordevice can read information from, and write information to, the storagemedium. In the alternative, the storage medium can be integral to theprocessor device. The processor device and the storage medium can residein an ASIC. The ASIC can reside in a user terminal. In the alternative,the processor device and the storage medium can reside as discretecomponents in a user terminal.

Conditional language used herein, such as, among others, “can,” “may,”“might,” “may,” “e.g.,” and the like, unless specifically statedotherwise, or otherwise understood within the context as used, isgenerally intended to convey that certain embodiments include, whileother embodiments do not include, certain features, elements and/orsteps. Thus, such conditional language is not generally intended toimply that features, elements and/or steps are in any way required forone or more embodiments or that one or more embodiments necessarilyinclude logic for deciding, with or without other input or prompting,whether these features, elements and/or steps are included or are to beperformed in any particular embodiment. The terms “comprising,”“including,” “having,” and the like are synonymous and are usedinclusively, in an open-ended fashion, and do not exclude additionalelements, features, acts, operations, and so forth. Also, the term “or”is used in its inclusive sense (and not in its exclusive sense) so thatwhen used, for example, to connect a list of elements, the term “or”means one, some, or all of the elements in the list.

Disjunctive language such as the phrase “at least one of X, Y, Z,”unless specifically stated otherwise, is otherwise understood with thecontext as used in general to present that an item, term, etc., may beeither X, Y, or Z, or any combination thereof (e.g., X, Y, and/or Z).Thus, such disjunctive language is not generally intended to, and shouldnot, imply that certain embodiments require at least one of X, at leastone of Y, or at least one of Z to each be present.

While the phrase “click” may be used with respect to a user selecting acontrol, menu selection, or the like, other user inputs may be used,such as voice commands, text entry, gestures, etc. User inputs may, byway of example, be provided via an interface, such as via text fields,wherein a user enters text, and/or via a menu selection (e.g., a dropdown menu, a list or other arrangement via which the user can check viaa check box or otherwise make a selection or selections, a group ofindividually selectable icons, etc.). When the user provides an input oractivates a control, a corresponding computing system may perform thecorresponding operation. Some or all of the data, inputs andinstructions provided by a user may optionally be stored in a systemdata store (e.g., a database), from which the system may access andretrieve such data, inputs, and instructions. The notifications/alertsand user interfaces described herein may be provided via a Web page, adedicated or non-dedicated phone application, computer application, ashort messaging service message (e.g., SMS, MMS, etc.), instantmessaging, email, push notification, audibly, a pop-up interface, and/orotherwise.

The user terminals described herein may be in the form of a mobilecommunication device (e.g., a cell phone), laptop, tablet computer,interactive television, game console, media streaming device,head-wearable display, networked watch, etc. The user terminals mayoptionally include displays, user input devices (e.g., touchscreen,keyboard, mouse, voice recognition, etc.), network interfaces, etc.

While the above detailed description has shown, described, and pointedout novel features as applied to various embodiments, it can beunderstood that various omissions, substitutions, and changes in theform and details of the devices or algorithms illustrated can be madewithout departing from the spirit of the disclosure. As can berecognized, certain embodiments described herein can be embodied withina form that does not provide all of the features and benefits set forthherein, as some features can be used or practiced separately fromothers. The scope of certain embodiments disclosed herein is indicatedby the appended claims rather than by the foregoing description. Allchanges which come within the meaning and range of equivalency of theclaims are to be embraced within their scope.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system configured to enable allocation ofphysical resources, comprising: a network interface; at least oneprocessing device operable to: access historical utilization data,comprising occupancy data, for a first physical resource, the historicalutilization data comprising dates at which the first physical resourcewas utilized by a given user, wherein the first physical resource isshared amongst a plurality of physical resource users in a timedisplaced manner; access historical event data, the historical eventdate comprising event types and event dates; use a neural networkcomprising an error function to identify correlations between historicalutilization data, comprising occupancy data, and the historical eventdata, comprising event types and event dates; based at least in part onthe identified correlations between historical utilization data,comprising occupancy data, and the historical event data, comprisingevent types and event dates, predict future high utilization dates forthe first physical resource; generate a notification regarding at leasta first predicted future high utilization date, the notificationincluding a control via which a reservation may be initiated for thefirst physical resource for the first predicted future high utilizationdate; transmit the notification regarding the first predicted futurehigh utilization date to at least one physical resource user in theplurality of physical resources users; at least partly in response to adetection of an activation of the control via which a reservation may beinitiated for the first physical resource for the first predicted futurehigh utilization date, registering a corresponding reservation for thefirst physical resource for the first predicted future high utilizationdate.
 2. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the neural networkcomprises: one or more convolution layers and/or a multi-layer longshort-term memory component.
 3. The system as defined in claim 1,wherein the historical utilization data comprises waiting list data. 4.The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the historical utilizationdata comprises requests for reservations for the first physicalresource.
 5. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein the historicalevent data comprises events associated with a geographical region wherethe physical resource is located.
 6. The system as defined in claim 1,the operations further comprising: identify which physical resource userin the plurality of physical resources meets a first eligibilitycriterion, the first eligibility criterion relating to historicalreservations for the first physical resource; wherein the notificationregarding the first predicted future high utilization date is initiallytransmitted to a first physical resource user in the plurality ofphysical resources that satisfies the first eligibility criterion; andat least partly in response to failing to detect a reservation by thefirst physical resource user within a first threshold period of time,transmit the notification regarding the first predicted future highutilization date to one or more other physical resource users.
 7. Thesystem as defined in claim 1, wherein the notification regarding thefirst predicted future high utilization date is initially transmitted toa first physical resource user in the plurality of physical resourcesusers, wherein the system is configured to, at least partly in responseto failing to detect a reservation by the first physical resource userwithin a first threshold period of time, transmit the notificationregarding the first predicted future high utilization date to one ormore other physical resource users.
 8. The system as defined in claim 1,wherein the notification regarding the first predicted future highutilization date is transmitted to each of the plurality of physicalresources users.
 9. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein thenotification regarding the first predicted future high utilization dateidentifies an event correlated with the first predicted future highutilization date.
 10. The system as defined in claim 1, wherein thefirst physical resource comprises an inhabitable structure.
 11. Acomputer-implemented method, the method comprising: using a computersystem comprising one or more computer devices, accessing historicaldemand data comprising reservation data for a first physical resource,the historical demand data comprising dates at which the first physicalresource was reserved by a given user, wherein the first physicalresource is shared amongst a plurality of physical resource users in atime displaced manner; accessing, using the computer system, historicalevent data, the historical event date comprising event types and eventdates; identifying, using the computer system, correlations betweenhistorical demand data, comprising reservation data, and the historicalevent data, comprising event types and event dates; based at least inpart on the identified correlations between historical demand data,comprising reservation data, and the historical event data, comprisingevent types and event dates, predicting future high demand dates for thefirst physical resource; generating a notification regarding at least afirst predicted future high demand date, the notification including acontrol via which a reservation may be initiated for the first physicalresource for the first predicted future high demand date; transmittingthe notification regarding the first predicted future high demand dateto at least one physical resource user in the plurality of physicalresources users; at least partly in response to a detection of anactivation of the control via which a reservation may be initiated forthe first physical resource for the first predicted future high demanddate, registering a corresponding reservation for the first physicalresource for the first predicted future high demand date.
 12. The methodas defined in claim 11, wherein identifying correlations betweenhistorical demand data, comprising reservation data, and the historicalevent data, comprising event types and event dates, is performed using aneural network comprising: one or more convolution layers and/or amulti-layer long short-term memory component.
 13. The method as definedin claim 11, wherein the historical demand data comprises waiting listdata.
 14. The method as defined in claim 11, wherein the historicaldemand data comprises requests for reservations for the first physicalresource.
 15. The method as defined in claim 11, wherein the historicalevent data comprises events associated with a geographical region wherethe physical resource is located.
 16. The method as defined in claim 11,the method further comprising: identifying which physical resource userin the plurality of physical resources meets a first eligibilitycriterion, the first eligibility criterion relating to historicalreservations for the first physical resource; wherein the notificationregarding the first predicted future high demand date is initiallytransmitted to a first physical resource user in the plurality ofphysical resources that meets the first eligibility criterion; and atleast partly in response to failing to detect a reservation by the firstphysical resource user within a first threshold period of time,transmitting a subsequent notification regarding the first predictedfuture high demand date to one or more other physical resource users.17. The method as defined in claim 11, wherein the notificationregarding the first predicted future high demand date is initiallytransmitted to a first physical resource user in the plurality ofphysical resources users, the method further comprising: at least partlyin response to failing to detect a reservation by the first physicalresource user within a first threshold period of time, transmitting thenotification regarding the first predicted future high demand date toone or more other physical resource users.
 18. The method as defined inclaim 11, wherein the notification regarding the first predicted futurehigh demand date is transmitted to each of the plurality of physicalresources users.
 19. The method as defined in claim 11, wherein thenotification regarding the first predicted future high demand dateidentifies an event correlated with the first predicted future highdemand date.
 20. Non-transitory computer readable memory having programinstructions stored thereon that when executed by a computer systemdevice cause the computer system to perform operations comprising:access historical demand data, comprising reservation data, for a firstphysical resource, the historical demand data comprising dates at whichthe first physical resource was reserved by a given user, wherein thefirst physical resource is shared amongst a plurality of physicalresource users in a time displaced manner; access historical event data,the historical event date comprising event types and event dates;identify correlations between historical demand data, comprisingreservation data, and the historical event data, comprising event typesand event dates; predict future high demand dates for the first physicalresource based at least in part on the identified correlations betweenhistorical demand data, comprising reservation data, and the historicalevent data, comprising event types and event dates; generate anotification regarding a first predicted future high demand date;transmit the notification regarding the first predicted future highdemand date to at least one physical resource user in the plurality ofphysical resources users; in response to a reservation request, registera corresponding reservation for the first physical resource for thefirst predicted future high demand date.
 21. The non-transitory computerreadable memory as defined in claim 20, wherein identifying correlationsbetween historical demand data, comprising reservation data, and thehistorical event data, comprising event types and event dates, isperformed using a neural network comprising: one or more convolutionlayers and/or a multi-layer long short-term memory component.
 22. Thenon-transitory computer readable memory as defined in claim 20, whereinthe historical demand data comprises waiting list data.
 23. Thenon-transitory computer readable memory as defined in claim 20, whereinthe historical demand data comprises requests for reservations for thefirst physical resource.
 24. The non-transitory computer readable memoryas defined in claim 20, wherein the historical event data comprisesevents associated with a geographical region where the physical resourceis located.
 25. The non-transitory computer readable memory as definedin claim 20, the operations further comprising: identify which physicalresource user in the plurality of physical resources meets a firsteligibility criterion, the first eligibility criterion relating tohistorical reservations for the first physical resource; wherein thenotification regarding the first predicted future high demand date isinitially transmitted to a first physical resource user in the pluralityof physical resources that meets the first eligibility criterion; and atleast partly in response to failing to detect a reservation by the firstphysical resource user within a first threshold period of time, transmitthe notification regarding the first predicted future high demand dateto one or more other physical resource users.
 26. The non-transitorycomputer readable memory as defined in claim 20, wherein thenotification regarding the first predicted future high demand date isinitially transmitted to a first physical resource user in the pluralityof physical resources users, the method further comprising: at leastpartly in response to failing to detect a reservation by the firstphysical resource user within a first threshold period of time,transmitting the notification regarding the first predicted future highdemand date to one or more other physical resource users.
 27. Thenon-transitory computer readable memory as defined in claim 20, whereinthe notification regarding the first predicted future high demand dateis transmitted to each of the plurality of physical resources users. 28.The non-transitory computer readable memory as defined in claim 20,wherein the notification regarding the first predicted future highdemand date identifies an event correlated with the first predictedfuture high demand date.